1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to packet switching systems, and more specifically to a packet switching system of the input-output buffering type for switching packets such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) cells.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a packet switching system of the input and output buffering type, as described in a paper "A very high-speed ATM switch with Input and output buffers", Yukihiko Doi et al, ISS'92 pages 231-235, incoming packets are stored in an input buffer and launched onto a self-routing network where it is routed to a destination output buffer according to the routing information of the packets. To achieve high throughput, it is necessary to provide as many high capacity output buffers as possible for bursty traffic and to provide a high speed scheduling algorithm for multicast traffic. It is still desirable to reduce the amount of output buffers required and to simplify the scheduling algorithm for both point-to-point and multicast traffic.